The material that follows is a reconstruction of a live and interactive event. I have posted it to this site primarily so that those who have seen it can review my points, but others may get something useful out of it as well. I have tried to link to how-to articles on this site or downloadable example slides where relevant.
1. You Are the Show
2. Shows Are Not Enough
3. Don't Compete With Learning
4. Think In Pictures
5. Make Looking Easy
6. Make It Stick
7. Don't Create On Cruise Control
8. Sharpen Your Tools
9. Anticipate the Unexpected
10. (Explore) On Your Own

Click on the links at left to jump directly to any of the ten rules.
While most advanced PowerPoint courses lead users through a series of techniques, they are not applied or mapped out with any evaluation or sense of purpose. To me, this is sort of like offering a cooking class and spending the whole time showing people how to use an oven. Once you know the basics, what you really need to know is how to make food that tastes good. That’s why nobody asks if you know how to use an oven. What matters is if you are a good cook. If you are, knowledge of how an oven works is part of the package, but if you aren’t, and you tell me, "Well, I know how an oven works," I will probably go ahead and make my own dinner.
Today I’m going to share ten rules that will make you a better PowerPoint educator. In this sense, my aim is proscriptive. I want not only to teach you how to do certain technical things, but how to do them well. In other words, we are going to talk about some special tricks you can do with your oven, advanced stuff they don’t describe in the manual. But I’m also going to try to teach you how to cook.

Please keep in mind that the rules I lay out here are also meant to govern this workshop material.
By this I mean two things.

First, I mean that a PowerPoint presentation is not a teacher. It is a teaching aid. PowerPoints should be designed to keep the instructor at the center of the action. I will show you how to do this throughout this session.

Second, I mean that the expectations today’s students have regarding how they are informed about things is very different than it was thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago. Technology has changed the landscape of teaching and of learning in both good and bad ways, and a good teacher must take advantage of new technology and subvert it when necessary.
An example: The role of music in public life. Prior to 20th-century inventions, most people experienced music as a family pastime. Young women of the middle class were usually expected to pick up some musical skills so they could participate in entertaining guests and reinforcing family relationships through shared music.

What technologies led to this scenario more or less dying out for most Americans?
(Animation.)
The influences are clear. What are the results?
Another 19th-century anachronism. What is today's analogue?
No judgment is intended here - just recognize the different ways the mind is engaged. The visual orientation. (Photo by Kenn Kiser.)
Educational tools in the 19th century. The blackboard was invented in the late 1800s. That was new, and revolutionary, technology.
The characters in this line of products are currently teaching my two-year-old daughter the alphabet.
The teacher is the bridge between these two worlds, and must be the bridge to the next. Teachers have survived the transition to the new media environment, but must now communicate with students who are products of that new environment. This is because the ways students typically engage their minds in mental work is changing. As educators, we must engage students with their tools as well as our own, using them effectively and confronting their weaknesses when necessary.
You are the show, but a show is not enough. What do you think of when I talk about "putting on a show"?
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates product reveal: Sir, could you move a little to the left, please?
Steve Jobs product reveal: The presenter is at the center of the presentation. Without him, everything would fall apart. Is there less information being conveyed? No. But the visuals are used to support the speaker, not replace him.
To really assess how PowerPoint can and should be used, it’s useful to compare it with the standard visual aid that was available to teachers long before computers: the blackboard. This is the "new technology" of the late 19th century. How did educators assess its value and determine that it was worth adopting for their classrooms?
Benefits of the Blackboard

Presentation: Display text and organizational/explanatory images (diagrams) to accompany lecture
Walk-Through: Allow teacher to demonstrate the way to solve a problem
Participation: Workspace allows students to participate in problem-solving in front of the group
Advantages of PowerPoint

Preparation: Materials prepared in advance to make class time more efficient
Graphics: Realistic, detailed or even animated images
Flexibility: Older technology (chalkboard or whiteboard) can still be used for discussion, brainstorming, or student work
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
If it's so great, why do we so often end up with this?

What's wrong with this learning experience?
Technology is supposed to make teaching better. Sometimes it doesn’t. In the case of PowerPoint, I believe this is due almost exclusively to misuse, rather than flawed design.
Considering the difference between passive entertainment and learning, there are many ways that a technology like PowerPoint can interfere with the learning process.
This photograph by Rutgers University entomologist Michael May was taken on a passenger ferry. Clearly, accommodations were made to ensure that riding the ferry was a pleasant experience for the passengers. In an emergency, though, it might be less so: This mural is camouflaging an emergency exit. It's a pretty good metaphor for the many things PowerPoint allows you to do that simply should not be done.
In context, this sign probably makes sense. The problem is, it's easy to strip information of its context. This is a very basic, iconic example of what people who study media call interference.
(Lots of animation: Bullets fly in one letter at a time, picture rotates, colors change.) This slide may look better, but it isn't doing a much better job of helping students understand their world. When it comes right down to it, there are three basic keys to producing good PowerPoint presentations. These are pretty much the foundation of everything I'm going to say today.
First, use bite-sized slides. We'll get into exactly what that means next.
Second, serve reasonable portions. Dr. William Klemm at Texas A&M University points out that what we’re calling “portion size” is as much an issue in learning that is Internet-based and student-directed as with instruction that is PowerPoint-based in a lecture format. Students’ appetite for knowledge in the world of web-surfing are often bigger than their short-term memory capacity (Klemm, in press).
Third, use fresh ingredients. Ingredients in this sense cover everything from the use of graphics and text to slide design. We’ll cover all of that today.
Let's look at a little bit of what we currently know about how the brain works. First, I'll draw some of the core principles from Richard Mayer's Theory of Multimedia Learning.

Students place words into auditory working memory and images into visual working memory. Written words are processed as images.
Students then organize information separately in auditory and visual memory and then integrate these representations with prior knowledge. This is why it is important that images do not interfere with the processing of other visual information. The auditory channel can offer reinforcement.
Using attention-getting visuals that do not reinforce or replace written or spoken content reduces knowledge retention. (McConnell and Quinn, 53A(1), 53-67.)
(Animation.)This is from Mayer's research.

So how do we use PowerPoint effectively? Isn't that what all of those wacky animations and clip-art graphics are for?
Everything will come together for you in your use of PowerPoint, or of any fundamentally visual medium, if you do your best to follow this rule.
In any medium, they:

Are topically relevant
Are memorable
Reinforce or replace written or spoken content
Richard Mayer did a study of the use of graphics in sixth-grade science textbooks in the early 1990s. He measured the amount of space devoted to text and images in a random sample of pages from the sixth-grade science textbooks then approved for use in California. He found that the textbooks recognized the importance of pictures in teaching...
...but that their use of graphics was fairly indiscriminate. (Animation reveals statistics: 62% representational, 23% decorative, 10% explanatory, 5% organizational). By "representational," Mayer meant that text about cats would be accompanied by a reasonable picture of a cat, reinforcing what you were learning. By "decorative," he meant pictures that bore no relevance whatsoever to their topic - they were generic, or off-topic, or simply amusing. "Explanatory" refers to graphics that demonstrate processes, how things or systems work. These can sometimes explain things far better than text alone. "Organizational" refers to things like diagrams, which show how something is organized, labeling the parts of something.
So if our main goal is to avoid interference, we're on the right track. We need to be consistent in our message if we want students to both understand it and remember it. If we aren't, we'll see that %20+ drop in retention. The worse your presentation, the more your scores will drop. But even that's just B- work as far as we're concerned.
So how do we do better? How do we do exceptional work with PowerPoint that will really make the most of this medium and help our students succeed?
Let's look at that horrid example I showed you earlier.
(Discuss.)
Here's what I would do with it. Keep in mind, if I were actually presenting this to students, I would probably cut the text down even further. (Click here to download: Sample Presentation.ppt.)
(Animation: fissure appears on capitol building as statement is made.)
Congressmen from free and slave states each feared that the other faction would gain enough power to change federal law concerning slavery. (Animation: Old white men appear on either side of the building.) They worked together to avoid upsetting the balance and to ensure they could conduct other Congressional business in spite of their disagreements about slavery. (Animation: Congressmen in the front of each group move towards each other and clasp hands.)
Here we outline what we're going to cover.
The balance here is a simple metaphor.
Now it's also a strong mnemonic device.
(Animation: Line of latitude and state outline appear on the map.) This graphic gives them substantially more information than they would otherwise have. It's made from an edited piece of clip art. I'll show you how to edit clip-art later; it can save your presentations. (Animation: Date range appears at lower right.) Here I've added a feature to show the range each of these compromises was in effect.
The First Amendment: Right to petition government (Link to text of Bill of Rights online.)
Restrictions on some (slaves) led to restrictions on others (freemen). (Animation: Ball-and-chain graphics appear in descending sequence with color shifting from "slave" blue to "freeman" pink. Bottom ball-and-chain then moves to join silhouette of freeman.)
Trying to give students a bit more of a big picture view that might be applied to other historical or current events.
Is this better? Why? (Discuss.)

Text is given adequate space on the slide.
Images reinforce concepts and provide visual mnemonic cues.
Hierarchical outlines are replaced by a narrative structure.
Many more slides are used with much less material on each one.
Notice that we had a much greater number of slides here than we did previously.
Does this mean this presentation will take more time than the single-slide version? (Discuss.) (Animation: Clocks' text bubbles and expressions.)
What it comes down to is the relationship between time and content. Are you providing the appropriate amount of time to cover the material in a memorable way?

If you are not, it doesn’t matter how many or how few slides you use – your audience won’t get it. If you are, the length of the presentation is dictated by how good your text, visual, and speech content is, and how difficult or extensive the topic is that you’re trying to cover.
You're all familiar with this equation.
Here's mine. (Animation points out components.) Time divided by the amount of information that must be spoken aloud or interpreted in text or image format, all multiplied by your methods' effectiveness, is equal to the amount of true learning that will take place.
So what are great visuals? (Discuss.) I think they should satisfy at least some of the following criteria:

Be topically and sociologically relevant
Be understood quickly and intuitively
Help students remember important information
Contribute meaning beyond the text
And sometimes, they can even shape student impressions more subtly or more meaningfully than text
We'll return to the topic of using images effectively when we discuss editing clip-art. Now I want to turn to another major determinant of the length of your presentations and the degree of retention: making sure your presentation is easy to read. Photo by Kenn Kiser.
What’s the smallest size font you can comfortably read on-screen? (Discuss.) Most people say 24. That's the smallest we go with our PowerPoint materials, and that's the smallest size I suggest you use.
Is one of these fonts easier to read than the others?
The main difference between these fonts is this: Whether or not they have serifs, like the little feet and dangly parts on the "T" at left.
Fonts used in print for body text typically have serifs. Serifs originated in the Roman lettering of stonemasons, who cut spaces at the edges of letters for dust to settle so it would not obscure the shape of the letters themselves.
Screen fonts typically lack serifs. (These fonts are called sans-serif fonts.) The earliest sans-serif fonts were designed for use in headings. Photo by Zach Carter.
Hoffman, 1.
Hoffman, 1.

The difference in reading speed of screen presentations that use Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial, Times, or Helvetica is statistically non-significant. And there is no difference at all in reading accuracy between those five type faces. (Hoffman, cited in Crispen.)

A basic principle of design recommends that you use a limited number of fonts – in the case of PowerPoint, ideally no more than one for titles and a second for slide text. Your design will also appear more consistent if you limit the number of different point sizes you use. I use sizes 24 and 28 almost exclusively, and the default title size (44 point).
These considerations are far more important than the font you choose, as long as you're using a basic font.
There are two reasons why black text on a white background is better than white text on a black background: Light text on dark backgrounds tends to “halate” (glow) and can be harder on the eyes; and room lighting will wash out a dark background, making light text harder to read. Especially in education, it is better to be able to present with some lighting present if possible.
A slide design by Microsoft.
Another design by Microsoft.
Another design from Microsoft. Keep in mind, this is from the team that invented PowerPoint.
This is a background created for one of our PEER curriculum modules (“Raccoons, Robbers, and Radios”).
Format > Picture, then adjust brightness way up and contrast way down. Paste it into a master slide and send it to the back.
Bad background.
Another reason it's bad: Doesn't play well with real (purposeful) graphics.
It works. This would be good for a presentation on, say, avian flu.
Surprisingly, this one works too. Ditto for mad cow disease.
The U.S. Constitution serves as the background for PEER’s 8th-grade module “The Candlestick Treasure,” which is set in 1789 in Philadelphia.
The city of Houston provided its own low-contrast image for our 7th-grade module on smog, “Connections.” Sadly, I only had to adjust the levels on this one a little bit.
Sometimes, there's a tree where you need a road. In real life, most of the time, you'd cut down the tree. But you can't always do this in education without losing something very important. What follows are some strategies to prevent you from having to cut down the tree.
Everyone likes to know where they’re going.
Buttons are simply a type of Autoshape that has a built-in Action Setting. You can use them to link to other slides in your presentation. I use them sometimes to allow me to skip posting content on the screen, and will click it if a discussion provides all of the answers I'm looking for.
Dr. Klemm suggests breaking after 10 minutes of presenting so that students can process what has been stored in their short-term memory bank (Klemm, in press).
Klemm also suggests utilizing blank slides during interactive periods like discussions or activities so that students are not distracted from your purpose by what has been presented (Klemm, in press). If you don’t need the visual reminder, you can always hit Shift+B to go to black and Shift+W to go to white. It's a toggle, you just hit it again to bring the slide back up. These keystroke commands are in the PowerPoint Commands handout in your binder's Resources section. (Break.)
There are a lot of tools that PowerPoint provides to justify new software versions. Unfortunately, some of these tools are the program's own worst enemies.
This is an example of Chindogu, the Japanese art of marginally useful inventions. The basic idea of a Chindogu advice is that it solves a problem in an undesirable way, or in a way that exaggerates the degree of the problem. (Click here to visit the International Chindogu Society website.)
PowerPoint "wizards" generally work the same way.
Edward Everett, the orator who spoke at Gettysburg for two hours prior to Lincoln, expressed his admiration for the Gettysburg Address by writing to Lincoln that "I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."
So what if Abraham Lincoln had access to PowerPoint? This is the question Peter Norvig asked himself, and he came up with a stunning parody of the ill effects PowerPoint can have. Norvig is now Director of Research at Google (Norvig, 4). The point of his exercise was to demonstrate that a good educational presentation is not simply an outline, and it is also not simply a way to force someone to read information which they might ignore on paper. A good educational presentation strives to engage students on a deeper level than a lecture alone can. If it doesn't, it only detracts from what you're trying to achieve. (Visit Norvig's parody on the web.)
I am deeply indebted to Patrick Crispin for the observations in this and the subsequent two slides. (Crispin, 13-14.)
Animation schemes can literally block the reading of information and discourage even the mere temporary comprehension of words!
Transitions can distract students from your purpose, interrupt thought processes and inhibit retention.
“AutoContent” can create stilted frameworks for ideas that can feel irrelevant, unnecessarily complex, or impersonal. Lecturers should not be dragged through a presentation by bullet points, but should lead the show.
Other “helps” like prepared slide designs and formats can also discourage presenters from making the most of PowerPoint.
Microsoft is not in the business of providing great visuals – except for business.
Only one of these 16 results is relevant to actual, physical growth as opposed to economic growth. Of the total number of clip art objects relating to “growth,” 5.7% dealt with physical growth.
In actual photos tagged with this keyword, we’d expect to fare better, and we do, but not by much; we now have 4 relevant results out of 16, the other 12 being business metaphors.
But there is a relatively simple way that much of the clip art provided by Microsoft can be repurposed for use in non-business settings. (This only works with Microsoft Clip-Art Objects.)
Let’s say you wanted to do a story problem to make kids solve for the volume of a locker. You need a picture of some lockers. Here’s a piece of clip art.
Ungroup it, twice.
Every piece of this clip art object has now been separated out into its own shape. Each of these shapes has the resize and rotate handles you would see on a single Autoshape, and can be manipulated accordingly.
Let’s get rid of this kid. (Demonstration.)
The end result.
I can change the colors of individual elements, group chunks together, resize them... (Demonstration.)
Here's what I came up with.
I used this image, along with others of Madison and Jefferson, to introduce a social studies supplement on newspapers and freedom of the press in the Revolutionary era. Not a revolutionary use of clip art, to be sure, but customized to its purpose, more memorable, and thus better, I think.
Microsoft clip-art can be difficult to apply to social studies content, because it does not represent much that is of historical value. All conflict, for example, is metaphorical, and is provided solely for use in business analogies (tug of wars are popular). But history involves real conflict, and that should make it into our visuals as much as anything else that is of central importance. Here I modified a standard business metaphor for use in describing frequent clashes between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland in the 19th century.

Another hurdle in using Microsoft clip art is its eye towards diversity, which makes perfect sense for business applications and even for representing students themselves, but causes some problems in terms of historical repurposing. Groups almost always include members of different races (unless two people are in conflict, in which case they are both always white) and of both genders. Adapting clip art objects to illustrate historical events can lead to some obvious anachronisms, and we can correct those with editing.
(Many animated gifs travel through the screen here in an endless loop.) So, given what I've said so far, how do you think I feel about animations?
The animations on the slides that follow are included on your PowerPoint Toolkit CD so you can dissect and play with them later, so you can see how I build animations for PEER’s curriculum. You need to have PowerPoint 2000 or above for these to work properly, and some may be less friendly on a Mac. (Online users can download the file containing these animations using this link: Sample Animations.ppt.)
(Click here to download: Path Animation.ppt.)
This slide links to a flip-book PowerPoint presentation that creates the keyframe animation. Thanks to Danny Maas and his TiltTV blog for suggesting this to me - I haven't had the chance to use it in our materials yet, but will likely find a reason to do so. (Click here to download: Keyframe Animation.ppt. Make sure to download it to your computer rather than opening it in your browser. You need to have PowerPoint 2000 or higher for this to work.)
This slide links to a flip-book PowerPoint presentation that creates the keyframe animation using sprites. (Click here to download: Keyframe With Sprites.ppt. Again, make sure to download it to your computer rather than opening it in your browser, and note the requirements above.)
(Animation: Images of ball flash on screen in sequence, each replacing the last.) Also suggested by Danny Maas.
Let's apply our criteria for great graphics to animations, and see what we can come up with. In addition to the four types of graphics Mayer described, I would add "Participatory" as a fifth category, which is an important value of animations.

(Animation: Challenges are posed and answers walked through step by step in a sequence of text animations.) The best use of text animation is to time the supply of information so that questions can be posed to students and answers supplied in several steps.

Answers can also be supplied in stages, rather than all at once, to provide prompts for recall or to offer help in constructing a good answer.
(More text animations.) This was produced by one of our undergraduate fellows, Cory Wells.
(More text animations, followed by label of "Participatory."
(Steps appear in sequence, followed by Organizational and Participatory labels.
(Imaginary highways and factories appear on the cityscape along with their relevant text, which appears after discussion with the class. Label: Representational, reinforces text. This could even replace text.
How I did it.
What do all of these early American cities have in common?(The water appears only after a mouse click, followed by ships sailing into each harbor.)
How I did it.
(Arrows are animated.)
(Arrows are animated.)
How I did it.
(Fire is animated.)
(Animation: Carbon leaves fuel and rises to meet oxygen, some forming CO2 and some forming CO.
How I did it.
Each of these layers of fire is a modified version of the same hand-drawn autoshape, with transparency, color change, and other "emphasis" effects applied, as well as some small, tightly scribbled motion paths set to reverse and repeat indefinitely.
For the breakup of the oxygen, I just had the O2 disappear and two O's appear. Getting the C's to land next to them was a bit of a hassle, since motion paths in PowerPoint have no mapping tools, but simply have to be fussed with by hand.
(Animation: Top of cell pulls away to reveal microtubules inside.) This was all made using 3D autoshapes.
This actually ends with a virus getting on a subway that comes zooming by. I didn't include it here and have found that a lot of Texans are confused by the mass transit metaphor. Should have been a car, I guess. Label: Explanatory. Maybe it should have been Organizational.
How I did it.
(Animation: Plot elements are revealed one by one, first by their name, then with the definition added and the arrow prompting students to supply the next element.) Here students are asked to recall what elements are in a plot, in sequence, and then further asked to define it, with information revealed gradually as they go along. It also visually mimics the "arc" of a plot, of course, which is a useful mnemonic device. Label: Representational and Participatory.
Here's where I needed the two people fighting.
(Animation: Churches are replaced by interlocutors who are color-coordinated with their church's palette. Label: Representational.
Animations can be very useful in asking questions about geography. (A couple of layered animations render some of this text illegible in static form. Good reason to break things out into two slides instead of having overlapping text - also easier to edit later! Label: Organizational. Should have included Participatory too, because students are prompted for answers before they are provided using the animated graphics.
This one is purely decorative. (Animation: Soccer player jumps onto the screen and catches a ball in mid-air; fades to near-transparency and text appears.) Those motion paths were a pain to get synched. But once I've caught there attention, I fade the graphic completely to the background. No more distraction.
Here are a few things you can do to streamline your workflow.
Make and use templates. If you don't, your laziness makes you work harder.
Saving files with the .dot extension prevents you from saving over them unless you really want to. These files can include not only style information (fonts, backgrounds) but even starter content slides. Can save you tons of time.
Go to Tools > AutoCorrect Options > AutoFormat As You Type. Turn OFF these features:

Automatic bulleted and numbered lists - because you shouldn't be using them by default, but only when they are appropriate
Autofit body text to placeholder - This is PowerPoint's worst invention ever! It allows you to keep typing and typing and the text just gets smaller and smaller. Remember what we said about font sizes.
Automatic layout for inserted objects - Just try doing complex graphic layouts and then insert a new piece of clip art in there. You'll switch this setting right then and there - it basically will toss your graphics around trying to guess where you want them to go, and it's almost always wrong.
You can also customize toolbars to display specific commands that you use and hide ones that you don’t, and you can even add macros in as buttons of your own. There are several resources in your binder and on your Toolkit CD that can help you do this.
While in the Tools > Customize menu, you can right-click on any toolbar element and change or edit its toolbar button.
You can record simple sequences of repetitive actions in the form of macros to streamline your work process. Don't underestimate how much time this can save.
The “Edit Button” feature isn’t very robust, as it only displays a small set of possible button icons, and Microsoft Office actually has hundreds. But it’s very easy to edit a button you already have access to – to change the color, for example, for use with a new button.
You can save these settings in a portable file. In fact, most of us have strayed slightly from the default settings just in the process of working in PowerPoint – moving a toolbar here or there – and you may want to save your workspace layout before you start really messing with them, so that you can restore the old settings if you like.
Even the best-designed presentations can be ruined by poor preparation.
I use this feature to run through a presentation just to see how long it will take.
This will free up memory and help the machine run efficiently, which can have a big impact. Close all programs before doing this.
This allows you to see your slide notes while you present and to see what’s coming up. Keep in mind that watching someone stare at a computer screen while they’re talking to you can be very boring – you need to know what you’re going to say, and rely on PowerPoint only as a prompt for your comments. If you don’t plan on distributing your presentation later, you might choose to use your notes section for brief phrases rather than complete sentences to maximize this functionality, writing, for example:

Don’t stare at screen
Use notes as outline if appropriate

instead of the paragraph above.

This feature was new in PowerPoint 2000. Although PCI cards are more or less standard by now, be advised that you need one (or an AGP graphics card) to use this feature.
Here are some things I would have liked to have time to cover but we simply don't have time for. These are avenues I'd suggest you explore more on your own if you're interested.
Video files can be embedded into PowerPoint slides and displayed during a slide show. There are a wide variety of sources of free, public-domain movie files on the Internet; among the best sources is the Internet Archive which has footage of WWII propaganda films, advertisements, documentaries, and… vintage cartoons.
Windows MovieMaker is a free program for very basic movie editing. It can read many movie file types and breaks files up into multiple scenes for basic editing. Narration can be recorded to be included with the file. It creates Windows Media Format (.wmf) files, which are not the best video files for all purposes, but are the only kind that can be embedded directly into PowerPoint anyway.

The Windows Media Player for Macs is very buggy. There are programs that can convert Windows media files into QuickTime movies. (I try to avoid linking to pages on the Microsoft page, because they change file paths too often. If you go to the Live Data tutorial on this site explains how to do this, and has links for downloading sample PowerPoint and Excel files.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the best source of weather data. Weather websites get it from their records anyway, and NOAA offers the most in-depth information and the widest variety of non-graphic (tabular) formats for their data, which is what we need for live data feeds.
After importing the data I realized that there was way more than I needed. There were one- and eight-hour readings at every hourly interval each day. I wanted to show the trend and the way the levels fluctuate throughout the day. You don’t need nearly as much detail for that.
After creating a chart in Excel using the references I needed, I ported it over to PowerPoint with the Paste Link command. Here’s the final result. I don’t particularly like the way the x-axis labels are so small, but there is no simple way to break up the information from those cells in the table, so I left it as it was and added a color patch that obscured a little bit of it, to give me a little breathing room on my slide.
Let’s review what we’ve covered today.
I started out this presentation with a metaphor about cooking. You don’t take a cooking class to learn how to use a stove, right? Well, I hope I did teach you a few technical things you didn’t know about using PowerPoint. But please remember that how you choose to apply those technical skills will have far more impact if you use PowerPoint wisely.
The PowerPoint is not the show; the instructor is the show, with multimedia accompaniment.
They can still be interactive. But they are certainly more visually-oriented. Photo by Kenn Kiser.
Teachers must question, combat, and expand their students’ frame of reference, while speaking their language.
A good educational presentation strives to engage students on a deeper level than a lecture alone.
The extension of Gates’ message is that the audience is empowered to do an abundance of exciting things, and he will tell you what each of these things are. Slides like this, however, do not serve even this message well; offered such a cluttered collection of functions, each represented by its own detailed symbol, makes it unlikely any of it will leave an impression on us.
Entertain through engagement, not display.
Teaching in a state of emergency means working very hard to make sure kids get the point, not the fluff. This is especially difficult when the fluff is made to be very exciting; it will not lead students to the point unless it is designed to do so.
Lead, don’t follow, your presentation.
Unuseless is not enough.
Slay the wizards.
Create your own backgrounds, select your own fonts, and adjust or build your own images.
A medium is a way of thinking. PowerPoint is a visual medium.
Spoken words are processed in auditory working memory, and written words and pictures are processed in visual working memory. They are then integrated with prior knowledge to create meaning.
Interference can have a major effect on learning.
Great visuals are relevant to your audience’s experience and understanding of the world.
They are also relevant to their subject, contribute meaning independent of words, leave a lasting impression, and are easily understood.
The amount of information you try to present in a given period of time, and the effectiveness of your methods, will determine how much your students learn.
Use appropriate fonts at readable sizes and backgrounds that do not make learning more difficult for your students than it already is.
Display all fonts at 24 point or larger. Use a limited number of fonts – ideally one for titles and a second for slide text.
Reinforce.
Tell people where you're going, and give yourself options along the way.
Use narratives, not hierarchies.
Provide appropriate written materials.
Interrupt long presentations. Ten minutes at a time is ideal.
Use breaks to engage students with action.
Build in discussion to help reinforce and give students some influence over what is being taught. Consider using blank slides during discussion and activity.
Having a completed presentation doesn't mean you're ready to present it.
Create your own templates. Customize your preferences and toolbars. Write your own macros.
PowerPoint can be converted to a variety of formats, including HTML page sets for web distribution and movie files. It can incorporate sound, video, and embedded Flash animation.
Use live data from Excel and, by extension, from the Internet. I highly recommend you give this a try.
Goals for good PowerPoint use:

Creation of materials exciting to students
Portability and sharing of products
Efficiency of production
Enthusiasm of teacher for creative process
Use of visual technology in a visual way
Interaction between technology and other classroom tools
Interaction between presentation, presenter, and students
To help you get started, and to keep you on track as you continue to develop your PowerPoint skills after this workshop, I’ve prepared a “PowerPoint Toolkit” CD which we’ll distribute that contains a lot of great stuff for you to use when you get back home.
The PEER Toolbar includes new tools for clip-art editing, quick shortcuts, text-color-changing macros, and printing features.
Add-Ins are stored by default in C:/Documents and Settings/{Username}/Application Data/Microsoft/Addins. This is where PowerPoint will look for any Add-Ins you have downloaded, and where ones you create will be saved. Your "Customizing Toolbars" handout covers how to do this. I've also designed a "Toolbar Creator" PowerPoint file that can provide the foundation code and instructions for making your own toolbar add-ins.
PEER’s Quiz Show Template keeps track of scores for up to eight teams and offers a tiebreaker question whenever you want to end the game.
Our Distance Learning Community is a place for teachers to request custom-produced materials for their classrooms. We've filled hundreds of requests so far. Be as specific in your request as possible and we'll have an undergraduate fellow create a solution for you.
You’ve taken in a lot now, and we want to give you some time to work through whatever new ideas or skills seem most useful, interesting, or confusing to you. After a short break we’ll come back to this computer lab, where we’ll have multiple staff members on hand to help you guide you through whatever tasks you want to take on. Refer to your handouts, which provide a lot of the step-by-step instructions contained in this presentation, and think during the break about what subject material you’d like to apply some of your new skills to.
A final word of warning.

In theory, anything could change when Microsoft releases Office 12, or Office 2007, as developers are now calling it – first thought to be ready in 2005, then in 2006, and at the time of this workshop some industry analysts are saying it won’t be ready until the end of 2007. Whenever that happens, though, some commands, icons, etc. will change, and some of the macros we have created may cease to function as they should. If that occurs, we will be releasing new versions, and updating our training materials, for release via the PEER website. If you are on our email list, you will receive notification of these updates, so I encourage you to sign up if you haven’t already.





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